GreenDays: 1 Million Women Summit ~Let's play a closet game!~

So I was at a 1 Million Women Summit in Town Hall yesterday.

1 Million Women is an Australian movement to recruit ... well ... 1 million women to change their habits around the house a little in order to save money, energy and hopefully a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.

We played a little game relating to clothing. We asked four questions (I'm going to add a fifth one) about the clothing of the person sitting next to us. So:

1. Where was it made?
2. What is it made of?
3. How should it be looked after?
4. Was it a spontaneous purchase?
5. (My addition) Was it second-hand?

I chose to look at this jacket I was wearing ...


Nice piece. Made in Australia, no less, but made of polyster, can only be dry cleaned and was a spontaneous purchase. Uh oh.

This is where the fifth question comes in, because, in fact, I did buy it second hand. I was a little miffed that this question was not asked.

After the summit was over, and I had retreated back home, I emptied out my cupboard (because I realised there was a lot of clothing in there which I had not worn for many many moons), and began checking the labels of things.

The worst was a shirt (handed out for free by members of a certain student representative party at my university, no naming names) which, although screen printed, was 100% cotton and made in Nicaragua, of all places. What a shock.

So let's play a game now. Here are two pictures:


Can you tell which one was second hand, and which was new?

The first is a yellow Dangerfield shirt. The second is a striped Skeleanimals shirt.

If you guessed the first shirt was second hand, you were right. (If you already knew, that's cheating and you shouldn't be playing).

The point is, you can sometimes find amazing things in second hand shops. Dangerfield is particularly favourite brand of mine, and to come across this shirt for only a few dollars (when the brand, new, is very expensive) is great.

So saving money does not have to mean wearing a garbage bag. Some second hand clothing stores (depending on your location) contain incredible amounts of designer clothing. Also, Vinnies is running the 'Signed Finds' campaign in NSW, where bands/singers have signed items of their own clothing and donated them to random stores, to encourage people to go second hand.